She sat slowly down and leant back against the banister. Tears were visible on her cheeks as she looked towards him. ‘Your mother,’ she said in an uneven voice. ‘So sentimental. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. Literally.’

‘I know.’

‘I loved her because of her gentleness. Because of her … humanity.’

‘I know that too.’

‘She must have taken pity on him at the end. Or near the end. No surprise, really. She took pity on everyone. Except herself.’

‘Who did she take pity on?’

‘A few days before Christmas, about a week before she died, I came home and realized from the state she was in that she’d … exerted herself somehow. She said she’d gone for a walk, which was crazy. She was in no state to leave the house unaided. I thought maybe it was … an imaginary walk. But now I think she did go. And my guess is she went to the post box. And posted a letter to Marty.’

Nick moved to where she was sitting and knelt down beside her. ‘Containing what?’

‘An advert that appeared in the Evening Standard in May 1992.’

‘Placed by Mimori Takenaga.’

She seemed shocked by the realization that he already knew about the advert. She thumbed away her tears. ‘Who told you?’

‘Miranda. Martin showed it to her. He didn’t say how he’d got hold of it.’

‘Why did he show it to her?’

‘I suppose he hoped she’d agree with him that Peter Evans was Peter Ellery. She didn’t. Even though she admitted to me there was a resemblance. But I think she’s worried about Martin.’

‘Miranda only worries about herself.’

Nick patted April’s hand and felt the moisture of her tears on her thumb. ‘Don’t you think you’re a bit hard on her?’

‘Maybe. But she has no principles. You can’t trust someone who has no principles.’

‘Caro had principles.’

‘Oh yeah. By the bucketload. More than I could handle sometimes.’

‘But she didn’t tell me about the advert, which was evidence – not clinching, but still evidence – that my father didn’t die that night at Nancekuke.’

‘She wanted to tell you. I talked her out of it. You were going through a difficult phase around then. How old would you have been? Fourteen? Fourteen-year-old boys are quite a handful, let me tell you. Fortunately, though, they don’t tend to leaf through the pages of the Evening Standard when they come home from school every day.’

‘Did you think it was Peter in the photograph?’